Saturday, January 23, 2016

Oberon and Titania's Reconciliation

Just found out after coloring this that the woman in the middle isn't Titania, that's actually Hermia, a mere mortal in the Shakespearean play "Midsummer Night's Dream". Zooming out of the original work would show you the King and Queen fairies Oberon and Titania in the center, reconciled after causing some confusions from the spells cast. There's a prequel to that obviously since, taking from the title they must've had a quarrel before. Well I don't want to go into that, it's a long story, we haven't got all night. Unlike the play, which is a good one by the way, saw it back in college.

The lineaert is from Dover's Victorian Fairy Paintings. The original artwork is by Scottish painter Joseph Noël Paton. The insides of both the front and back covers of this book show the thumbrints of the original works for photo reference. Use a magnifying lens to study them up close, kind of lilliputian.

It was the first time for me to use Derwent Inktense pencils and boy, was I in for a treat! Unlike those of pencils the ink pigments were absorbed gloriously by the paper when water was applied. You can't spread them pretty much though, unlike watercolor pigment that are light and can be lifted and spread around with water. Once it's settled on paper the ink refuses to budge, so I learned to take extra care in shading.

I used Faber Castell classic watercolor pencils for the lighter flesh tones since none of my other pencil sets had these weak shades. I needed the wood nymphs to look pale in contrast to the mortal Hermia. Looking back, I think Hermia's skin (where I also used Inktense and Polychromos pencils) may be a tad too hepatitic. Oh well, I can still remedy that with touches of tan.

I should say one thing about using watercolor and Inktense, it's important to stretch the paper while it dries. I hate crimped paper after drying. The tugging exercise helped tremendously. The paper on this book is hardly 100 gsm but it's a good a paper as any for wet media as long as you're willing to do some tugging.

My Prismas and Polys joined in the fun with good ol' Vaseline to breakdown their binders. They performed remarkably well on top of the dried Inktense base. If I wanted to add another Inktense layer I just wipe off the gooey excesses of the petroleum jelly and the surface is good to go. Had no trouble achieving depth while layering with multimedia just as long as I didnt have to erase anything. Removing pigments would be the problem. I was glad I was able to avoid that.